John Benson

I am hoping someone here knows the situation with John Benson. I have not seen a post from him anywhere since July 2011. Anybody know how to reach him?

Herb

Herb

John Benson is by choice a reclusive man. Before he abandoned his web site he gave us permission to archive all his stories here on LSF.

We were last in touch with him about a year ago. As far as I'm aware he does not write any more, which is a great pity as he is one of my favourite authors.

He's written some great stories. so it's a pity he seems not to be writing any more. I can understand, however, how upon reaching the LSF 1,000-comments-received plateaus, he might feel that there is nothing worthwhile left to strive for.

If you need a replacement on your favorite authors list, however - one who's a BIT less reclusive - I'm happy to apply for the position. What's the job entail - resting on my laurels accepting praises and stuff? Maybe a few story-signings in the lobby of the Library?

I guess the well runs dry for some people after a while. Writing is something that a person has to really want to continue to do. Although JB is a fantastic writer, I have to agree there.

I'll disagree here, if I may! I read all of Benson's stories on his web site and Ithink the majority of them were rather feeble compared to those if Alex Birch, Clifford Dorset, opb and jimism and tiptopper etc...
Feel free to retaliate but I'll stick to my opinion anyway!

I think that's a perfectly reasonable position to hold Ordiale, and just illustrates how we are all different.
Personally I'm a bit of a Benson fan, as I think he does try to tease out something about our internal nature, both vanilla and kinky.The position his characters often feel trapped in allows him to hold a mirror to ourselves.

He does fall into the trap of sometimes writing the same story more than once, but that is a common failing, and if your readers like that story then the temptation is to fill your boots.

Update:

I just learned from the old sss newsgroup that John is well, just not posting at this time.

H

I always checked out John Benson stories but I had mixed feelings about them. His fantasy/science fiction stories often were too weird for me to relate to but he sometimes wrote contemporary stories and they were extremely good. Of course everyone has different tastes so this is just my opinion.

I quite agree with you, tiptopper! I don't care for science fiction stories anyway so I can't judge them.
But I must confess I quite liked some of his contemporary ones up to the point of saving about ten of them.

He does write well and imaginatively; I always held him near the top among my favorite authors. One thing did perplex me about his posts, here referencing his stories on sss: he made no effort to hide the origin and that led directly back to a public educational institution. As a resident of the same state I would never have allowed that to slip out let alone be prominent in such posts as it could lead to plenty of complications with the brass and the taxpayers. We all do what he did but are a bit more circumspect and perhaps that may be something that came back to bite him.